The government has rights in this invention pursuant to Contract No. W-7405-ENG-48.
This invention is directed to a glove box valve system which allows for the control, tightening of packing, and adjustment of a valve within the glove box by a mechanism located outside the glove box.
Currently fluid conduits including valves for directing and controlling the flow of hazardous fluids are frequently contained within a hermetically sealed container such as a glove box which is sealed from the ambient surrounds. The glove box permits the valve to be adjusted through use of gloves sealingly contained in the glove box wall. In this manner any leakage of fluid from the valve or the conduit will be safely contained within the glove box. As the packing becomes loose, the fluid, which may be a gas, escapes from the valve to the valve exterior. In addition to controlling the valve, the valve packing may also be tightened by using the gloves to manipulate wrenches within the glove box. To tighten the packing, which must be done from time to time, one wrench grips a smaller hex nut head and another grips a larger hex nut head and the smaller hex nut is turned.
The tightening of the packing within the glove box is very difficult because of the cumbersome gloves which inhibit motion. A similar difficulty is experienced when the valve handle, which is located in the glove box, is picked up by means of the gloves and placed on and engaged on the valve stem to operate the valve. Viewing of the operation is also inhibited by the fact that the operator must view the turning of the valve stem or tightening of the valve packing nuts through a window or port in the glove box.
One attempted solution to the problem thus posed of containing leakage from a valve so that it does not contaminate the ambient environment is to pass a part communicating with a valve through the wall of the containing box. Such a system is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,715,359 to Mackintosh, et al. This does not provide the desired solution, however, because the fluid can leak around the part where it passes through the containing box wall.